Beer Keg Cost Calculator
That $165 keg is not 124 pints at zero cost: foam, over-pours, and line waste take their cut first. Enter your keg price, size, serving size, and waste percentage to find your true cost per pint and your margin on every pour.
From keg price to cost per pint
The textbook pint count, 124 pints from a half barrel, assumes every ounce reaches a glass. It doesn't. Foam on the first pours, line purges after cleaning, over-pours by rushed bartenders, and the unusable dregs at the bottom typically claim 3–8% of the keg. At 5% waste, that half barrel yields about 118 sellable pints instead of 124, and your cost per pint rises accordingly. Bars that ignore waste systematically underprice their pours.
Keg yield is also a diagnostic tool. If a $165 half barrel should produce 118 pints at your waste level but your POS shows only 105 sold, the gap is telling you something: over-pouring, staff drinking, or theft. Reconciling kegs against sales weekly is one of the simplest loss-prevention routines a bar can run.
Worked example
You buy a half barrel (1,984 oz) for $165, pour 16 oz servings, lose 5% to foam and waste, and sell each pint for $7.50. Sellable ounces = 1,984 × 0.95 = 1,884.8 oz. Pints per keg = 1,884.8 ÷ 16 = 117.8 pints. Cost per pint = $165 ÷ 117.8 = $1.40. Profit per pint = $7.50 − $1.40 = $6.10, a margin of 81.3%. Even at a $6 menu price, the margin holds at 76.7%: draft beer earns its reputation as a margin engine.
Protecting your draft margin
Dial in the mechanical basics first: correct CO2 pressure, clean lines every two weeks, and proper serving temperature cut foam dramatically. Train pours to the glass line: a heavy hand costs real money across a keg's life. Price craft and import kegs separately from domestic; a $220 sixtel at $1.90 per pint needs a higher menu price than the $165 domestic half barrel to hold the same 20–25% pour cost. And match keg size to velocity: a sixth barrel that turns over in a week beats a half barrel that sits for a month and goes stale, even if the per-ounce price looks worse on the invoice.
Frequently asked questions
How many beers are in a keg?
A half barrel (15.5 gallons, 1,984 oz) yields about 124 sixteen-ounce pints before waste. A quarter barrel (7.75 gallons, 992 oz) yields about 62 pints, and a sixth barrel (5.16 gallons, 661 oz) yields about 41 pints. Real-world counts run 3–8 percent lower after foam and waste.
How much beer is lost to foam and waste?
Most bars lose 3 to 8 percent of a keg to foam, line purging, over-pours, and the unusable bottom. Warm lines, incorrect CO2 pressure, and untrained pourers push waste toward the high end. Tracking keg yield against the expected pint count is the fastest way to spot pouring problems.
Is keg beer cheaper than bottles?
Usually, yes: draft beer typically costs 20 to 40 percent less per ounce than the equivalent bottled or canned beer, and it commands a higher menu price. The catch is waste and spoilage: a slow-moving keg that goes stale erases the savings, so match keg sizes to your volume.
What is a good pour cost for draft beer?
Bars generally target a 20 to 30 percent pour cost on draft beer (cost divided by sale price). At $1.40 cost per pint sold for $7.00, pour cost is 20 percent and margin is 80 percent. Craft and imported kegs cost more per pint, so they need higher menu prices to hold the same margin.